Every Little Breath: A Tense Psychological Thriller Full of Twists

I was never really close to my real dad, and in a way I guess it was as if I always knew, or at least sensed that we were different.

While he bonded with my brother, I was the one on the outside looking in, wanting to be a part of things, but only to feel included. In all honesty, I was happiest alone when I was doing my own thing.

Dennis was a tough man to please. But although he irritated me, I never wished him any harm. When I discovered his plan to change his will and leave everything to Julie though, I couldn’t have that. It wasn’t right. I was relying on that money to fund my lifestyle.

That was why I had to end his life, a tumble down the stairs that had been a terrible accident. I almost didn’t get away with it. I didn’t realise my cousin was in the house, that he had heard us fighting. For a moment I had considered I might have to kill him, too, but I knew it would be too suspicious.

No, I had to make sure he kept his mouth shut. Ethan despised Dennis, so had nothing to lose from his death, still a few well-placed threats had ensured his silence. He was a mouse and I was confident he wouldn’t tell.

And honestly, even if he did, it was his word against mine. It wasn’t as if he had seen what I really got up to away from home. If he knew the real truth about me, it would sicken him to his stomach.

I always knew I was the odd one out, that I enjoyed a different kind of pleasure to other kids my age. I always found pain and death fascinating, even when I was really young, and as I headed towards my teenage years, I realised that I got off on fear. My brother had a stash of porno mags and he and his friends used to fantasise about the women inside them. I used to fantasise too, but not in the same way. My brother and his friends wanted to play with women’s breasts and stick their cocks inside them. I wanted that too, but I didn’t like the idea of the women enjoying it. My fantasies were of rape and of torture. Tying them down and forcing myself on them, hurting them with knives and other instruments, while making them beg and cry.

I wanted to frighten them, make them suffer, and as I later realised, I wanted to kill them.

The woman in Wales, the one who had been walking her poodle when she fell in the river, I guess she was technically my first kill, though I never really think of her that way.

She was significant in so many ways, as I know that day I crossed a line, I understood exactly who I was and what it was I wanted. It had almost been an accident. Yes, I had felt her fear, but it hadn’t played out the way I wanted it to in my head.

That’s why I never really count her as my first. That honour goes to Samantha Grant.

I was seventeen when I killed Sam. It was three years after the trial, and I was now working alone, and I had a hell of lot of frustration and pent-up rage building inside of me.

I had been hunting for the right location and found it in an abandoned cottage in the woods close to where we lived. It was perfect, with most of the windows boarded up, far enough away from everyone to be able to have my fun. I planned it for weeks, stealing plastic sheeting from work to cover the walls, floor and ceiling, hanging ropes from the high overhead beams. I already had a decent knife that my dad had given me and I borrowed a hammer, pliers and a shovel from the garage at home.

By the time I took my van out hunting, my torture room was ready and waiting.

I stopped Sam for directions, attacking and overpowering her, bundling her into the back of the van. It was all too easy and I kept her in that cottage for three long days while I had my fun, returning home each night and listening to the rest of the family talking about the missing woman from Northampton, the one who had just disappeared into thin air.

When I finally killed her, I buried her deep in the woods beneath the body of a deer whose carcase I had found. To this day, no one knows what happened to her.

As my bloodthirst grew, I knew I needed to get out of the house, carve my own path.

I no longer had a mentor to guide me, so it was a journey of discovery, learning what I liked. What turned me on. The knives are still a big part of my play today, but along the way I learnt how much I liked suffocation. Taking them to the brink and bringing them back. It has become my favourite method of execution. There is a great intimacy in taking someone’s last breath.

It was while I was serving that my mentor got in contact again and I learnt the truth. He wrote me a letter asking me to help him get revenge. I was more than happy to help.

That bitch, Casey Fallon, had ruined everything. Simply killing her would be too easy. I really wanted for her to suffer. She had taken away my dad.

I still remember so clearly the day I found out that Steve Noakes was my dad. It was just a few months before he was arrested and we had been out in the car. I think he had been fearful about telling me, scared I might be angry with him for withholding the truth from me for all of these years. He had been acting restless, fiddling about with the radio stations, before switching the music off completely, making flippant little comments, small talk, nothing of any relevance. It was unusual for him to be like this and I remember finding it a little unsettling.

‘I need to talk to you about something,’ he said eventually, after we had been driving in silence for a good ten minutes.

‘Okay.’ My heartbeat had sped up and my palms were damp. Somehow I knew what he was about to share would change things.

‘I’m not who you think I am.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your mother…’ He paused, seemed to be deciding the best way to continue.

‘What about her?’

‘Before you were born we were… together.’ I looked at him then, waited for him to explain what he meant. ‘We had an affair.’

‘You slept with her?’ My tone was tight, but that was more because he was keeping me on edge, not because I was angry.

He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he drove for another half a mile, before indicating and pulling off the road. As we sat on the edge of the field on a cool February day, he turned to face me and told me the words that shocked the life out of me.

‘Look, there’s no easy way to tell you this, so I’m just going to come out and say it, okay? I’m your father, Rod.’

I think, deep down, I knew what he was going to tell me. I was so dissimilar to Dennis, yet could see myself in Steve. We had a similar laugh, a way of sometimes finishing each other’s sentences, instinctively knew at times what the other one was thinking.

‘How do you know?’ I had so many questions, but that was the first one that sprang to mind.

‘Your dad had an accident not long after Kelvin was born and he couldn’t have more kids.’

‘So he knows?’

Steve shook his head. ‘He knows Wendy had an affair and that you’re not his, but he has no idea I’m your dad. And I’m going to ask you to please not tell him. He’s my brother. If he found out the truth, this would destroy him.’

‘Half-brother,’ I reminded. When I saw Steve’s eyes narrow, I was quick to placate. ‘I won’t breathe a word. I promise.’

We were silent for a moment. Steve I think in relief, me trying to take it all in.

I had never been close to Dennis, always preferring Steve’s company. Everything suddenly made more sense. Suddenly everything felt right.

And then he was snatched away.

Amanda Haines was supposed to be my first kill. Casey Fallon had ruined that, though, and she had taken my dad away from me.

Of course, she didn’t know that.

I was born Roderick Clarke, but only Steve and I know the truth, that I am really Roderick Noakes.

Casey’s expression when she sees me enter the bunker is priceless and I can tell her confusion at why I am here is usurped by her fear, as deep down she has already figured it out.

Her tone is uncertain when she speaks and I feed on that tremor in her voice.

‘Ricky?’